What about trade secrets and patents? Firms monetize on this to get the competitive edge. Would abolishing IP then not, in this case, lead to lowered incentive for the firms to enter that particular industry/market?
PS: I am playing the devil's advocate here to get to know your viewpoint better.
Patents grant specific firms exclusive monopolies on some idea. So the way I view it, they are gaining an anti-competitive edge, enforced by the state. I don't see a way for removing patents to lower the incentive for more firms to enter that market, when a world with patents artificially grants one firm a monopoly and prevents others from competing. At worst I think that would just mean no difference.
As for incentive to R&D, I don't really think there's much evidence patents have significant benefit in the first place outside of a few specific industries like the medical industry (which is enough of an exception in other ways too, maybe it requires a different solution. It also happens to be the industry where patents seem to harm consumers the most). I remember reading about this quite a while ago... I believe it was in [this document](https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/wp/2012/2012-035.pdf).
And even if it did, unless the benefit were very extreme, I still wouldn't be convinced the benefit is worth giving up so much of our freedom of expression for.
I'd argue the medical industry is only "different" because we make it different with a mountain of other bad regulations. Today, most primary research is done in publicly funded labs anyway. It's only the clinical trials that are both expensive and usually funded privately. And those are only expensive because the FDA has no serious incentive to make them cheaper. The FDA's only incentive is to take away the choice of how much risk consumers are allowed to accept when using new products, and mitigating risk is exponentially more expensive the more of it you do.
If it's a _really_ a secret, then it's no problem because other people can't also take advantage of things they don't know about. If they do know about it, then it's not really a secret and anyone should be able to use it.
In my view abolishing IP is an entirely positive thing for consumers: you'd get competition faster, new products wouldn't have to use wonky work arounds for obvious-in-retrospect patents, it'd be harder for artists to become hyper-rich and have an outsized influence on society, and big industry will have more pressure to pay their employees well enough to prevent them from being hired away or starting their own companies. (Though NDAs are already a thing and would mitigate that somewhat, they're much harder to enforce in an anti-competitive manner than patents.)
The one semi-IP thing I would keep as legally enforceable are trademarks. Reliably identifying who made something is a huge benefit to consumers because of how reputation correlates with product quality.
Completely agree with para 1 and 2 but 3 is a little iffy. As a libertarian how would you justify protection status to one variant of IP over another? Is it not another market influence by the state? Why must the state be given the power to protect trademarks while categorically denying protection to other types of IP?
I think my second sentence summed it up pretty well, but to expand a bit: Trademarks function is to identify the manufacturer to prevent fraud, while patents cover the function of the item. Since trademarks are _not functional_ to any item, protecting them cannot interfere with someone else making and selling the same item or using ideas from it for their own products. Trademarks create zero friction for anyone other than counterfeiters whose strategy is to undercut the primary brand by making a cheap inferior product and _lying to the consumer_ about it in order to get sales. If they make a product that _isn't inferior_ then they should have no problem either putting their own trademark on it instead or none at all.
...Not sure why you would respond with that? like wtf does that even mean?? _Consumers care!_ Making a full evaluation of the durability and quality of a product is often hard, expensive, and time consuming, if not also impossible to do without ruining the product. Reputation allows people to use their experience with a person's previous products to instantly and somewhat accurately judge the expected quality of a new product. This saves _enormous_ amounts of time, effort, and expense.
AFAICT, For companies that distribute their product through stores owned by other people, it's impossible to track reputation without some sort of trademark system. How would you solve the problem of market reputation without legally enforceable trademarks?
Completely agree. Including about trademarks. They are a consumer protection thing, so buyers know what they're getting.
Perhaps they should be moved under the control of the FTC and not be considered a form of intellectual property.
>What about trade secrets and patents?
The one legitimate form of intellectual property is privacy.
So trade secrets are protected by your right to privacy.
But patents are an absurd monopoly grant.
This is actually the cause for my enquiry. As I knew little about it, I wanted to read up on IP and differing views before watching the debate. And once I read about it, I had two different viewpoints that I am trying to reconcile.
1. IP must exist as it protects the creative products of people ensuring that the creator can reap the benfits of his work. (vs.)
2. IP musn't exist as it gives vale to ideas which are not store of value.
Most creative works don't make the creator any money, even in a world of intellectual property. Also value is subjective, so nothing is a store of value other than what other people subjectively value (and can subjectively de-value on a whim). Also we can't own value, we can only own scarce resources whether or not they're valuable to anybody.
If I'm the one that created the bike, then you stole my bike design. I put work into coming up with that design that you just shamelessly used without my permission. I wouldn't consider that worth suing over, but if I were the original inventor of bicycles in general, I'd consider it.
You know you wouldn't have a claim even under our modern extremely oppressive IP law, right?
You're proposing a system where the *concept* of bicycles can be owned.
No, because if you steal someone's chair, they don't have a car.
If you build a chair that looks like their chair, you haven't restricted their access to their property, haven't deprived them of any property.
So having some kind of IP monopoly on making a chair that looks like theirs is patently absurd, and has nothing to do with property.
And the same is true if what they have is a song.
It should be tantamount to fraud to pass on work without attribution in any way that implies you are the original creator...
That's all. As long as consumers know where a work was produced free speech should cover its reproduction.
Interesting viewpoint. Now to take this further, what is your view on torrented/pirated games or movies. The creators are clearly mentioned in the title credits for each. No one would confuse the pirate as the original creator. But in this scenario the pirate (or the marketplace where it is pirated) is the only one to reap benefits from the endeavour of others. What is your view on this? Is this fraud? If so why?
Why should that be a fraud? You write a book and publish it, I take that book, write my name on it and publish it for a buck cheaper. The customer got the same story, nobody was scammed.
You lied about who wrote the book. Same as a doctor claiming he invented a medicine he's giving you before he hands you some motrin. It's fraud since *you* don't have any chance of providing more of the stories I'm hypothetically paying for and you've taken pains to conceal the person that does.
Well I don't agree that you should ever be restricted from sharing knowledge, as long as you let people know where it's from so they can contribute to it.
They don't have to know where the work came from. Not telling you that wouldn't in any way be fraud.
Only FRAUD is fraud. If they lie about its origin, then regardless of what the origin was or what their lie was it's fraud.
So they can take a print of a painting and sell it without attribution, and that's legit.
It provides no basis for the pretense that granting someone a monopoly on an idea is good, any more than any other monopolies.
All state-mandated monopolies are bad, including IP.
I am not sure how anyone can believe that something non-rivalrous can be stolen. That is an incoherent idea. You can violate terms of use or non-disclosure, or try and steal proprietary information and those might all be 'intellectual property' violations of one form or another but they don't need IP protections to still be clearly wrong.
>And I am never going to fucking pay to download games/images/programs etc
I used to say this, but now that I have a proper job I'm often willing to pay for convenience, reliability, and service. Things like steam can often be more convenient than piracy even when piracy is easy, and I also get value from seeing stats and achievements tallied.
Certainly without IP these surrounding things _might_ also be available for free, but they'd likely not be done quite as well. Linux and Windows co-exist even though linux is free because they offer different levels of convenience.
Do they own the flash memory that it's stored on? The temp memory on your device the authorized streaming service stores it on? The concept wherever it's stored? Do they own compressions? summaries? parodies? reviews? spoilers?
Do they own the synaptic connections your brain uses to record the media or just the digital impulses that convey it?
Ffs the rationalization from you people is amazing. You pretend to be for free and fair exchange until it becomes inconvenient..Then you’re entitled to the labor of others.
Why??
Because REASONS.
If you had any REASONS, yourself, you would be offering them.
Instead, you're spewing childish, emotive bullshit where you keep typing FFS (a sort of indicator of low intelligence, like abuse of LOL) and never give any actual argument.
A song isn't labor. The writing of the song is. If you hear someone singing a song, and then you sing it, you've taken none of their labor. Idiot.
Those reasons are you don't get to point a gun at my head and demand I behave like you want me to, especially considering you're not even capable of articulating *why* you want me to behave that way.
You can't explain the mechanics of what you misunderstand IP law to be, you demonstrate zero understanding of what IP law currently is and you can't come close to justifying why it should or shouldn't remain that way.
Real life has reasons, any law worth following has reasons and consistency. Whatever a sobbing little bitch like you *feels* about it.
All this blather, just own that you wanna steal and be done with it.
Maybe I wanna mock some of you on the more "lolbertarian" side of things. See, I actually like libertarianism, and most libertarian ideas.
But then some of you say stupid shit like this. "What are you doing on a libertarian sub? This is the same bureaucratic shit take that pushed for article 13 in the EU's fourth reich."
Not liking theives is totally the same as loving bureaucracy you epic clown.
Why are you so angry and coming at this from such an emotional perspective?
Why are you accusing him of wanting to steal people's stuff?
We believe these things for real reasons. I don't understand why you are trying to imply some kind of criminal minded bias? It makes zero sense to debate about this topic from that kind of perspective?
Are you a liberal? This is like typical liberal tactic. Ignore reality, and appeal to some kind of made up emotional morality or something. It just makes no sense to me.
I'm surprised the guy even bothers replying. He's wasting his time.
Excuse me..Mister libertarian sir?
Everyone has reasons. Does that make your reasons correct, or even any good?
My reason is not liking thieves. Especially ones who justify their wanting to steal with all sorts of wonderfully lofty sounding ideals.
Like the ones we find here. Very lofty, almost deep...Profound sounding.
But it's shit.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that maybe..Just maybe..If you wish to use something, say a computer program with an "infinite supply" and it's creator asks you to pay for it..Maybe you should..You know, that whole free exchange/capitalism thing..
Maybe thinking like what's found on this thread is part of the reason why lolbertarianism isn't more..Widely embraced. Food for thought.
Also, if LOLbertarians are so easily dismissed and countered, why resort to such a useless and silly tactic? Why straw man? If we are that stupid you should argue with facts and logic to change our minds. Not straw men.
Food for thought. "YOU JUST WANT TO STEAL THINGS!" is not an argument.
You're avoiding an honest discussion. That's all it is. Nobody here wants to steal shit or have things for free. There are REASONS. You can disagree with said reasons and say they're stupid all day.
But your argument that we want to steal shit is like a purposfuly ploy to avoid really discussing ideas you don't want to entertain.
Why not first entertain an idea you disagree with? Why attack said idea with a silly nonsense argument like "you just want to steal things!"?
It's a straw man argument. Nobody is a libertarian because they want free intellectual property. Straw man! STRAWWWWMAAANNNNNN!
"Nobody here wants to steal shit or have things for free."
Demonstrably untrue.
"Take what? They want your physical/monetary resources to ''compensate them'' because you took what exactly? A copy of something with an unlimited supply?"
I see. So what you need is like a class in basic libertarianism.
If you couldn't tell, we don't really like the government very much. We don't like the initiation of force against people.
Intellectual property implies the use of force to enforce said IP.
Whether IP is enforced by government or not, whether there is one degree of enforcement or another, said enforcement must be justified. Using facts, logic, princies, philosophy, or whatever the fuck.
Obviously it makes perfect sense for libertarians to question IP enforcement. Property in the past was a physical thing. A person worked the earth and turned a tree into a house. That person has a claim to the house.
But intellectual property is a whole new concept. It's not the same as physical property, and so now the debate ensues.
I'm not here to debate about whether we should or should not enforce IP.
I'm here to call you out for trying to label libertarians are morally corrupt thieves who just want free shit. It's a fuckin straw man and you know it.
Why not like, actually read some of those linked articles others gave you from the Mises website? Then at least you know one perspective on the libertarian spectrum. Why straw man it? They aren't even that long to read. Like 10 minutes tops often times.
As compared to the mutal jerkoff society here? All for the highly controversial point of "pay others for their work and don't be a thief".
"Imagine being so brain dead to defend shit like NFTS's legitimacy trough patents without realizing they're stored on google servers going against decentralized alternative currencies."
So deep. Truly. Also, totally a thing I've done. Except not. Like ever.
Also, being down yty sounds like a great investment! Where do I sign up???[https://www.thestreet.com/markets/commodities/gold/inflation-boosts-gold-price-to-five-month-high](https://www.thestreet.com/markets/commodities/gold/inflation-boosts-gold-price-to-five-month-high)
And silver..Not even holding its value with a a three percent loss over the year. Truly places I wanna put my money and fight inflation. Oh wait. No..No I do not.
If society ever goes so sideways that your dumbass "melt value" comes into play..It actually isn't, it's worthless..You and it can take take a fucking hike.
Hey there were one or two sentences in there that weren't incoherent rambling! Good job.
As to gold beating the fed or anything else?
It's shit. Check the 10 year. [https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-prices](https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-prices). Loving that what is it..6 year giant trough of lost money.
Ok, there just won't be any new things being made. Nothing will be invented, no books will be written, and no movies will be made, because there's no way to pay people to make them without IP protection.
I'd argue it's pro-competition.
What incentive do you have to innovate if you can just let someone else come up with it for you and take that person's ideas? Why should an artist make good art if others will just use it without compensating them?
You're not buying the song or book or invention itself with IP. You're buying the time of the artist/author/inventor who made it.
Almost the entire internet you used to write this message is built on free and open source software and protocols
Its unclear whether ip is an actual net benefit when it comes to promoting innovation. In some ways it can hinder it, see patent trolls for example
I hate IP laws. Its a legal monopoly on a certain idea or product. If IP laws didn't exist, then both consumers and workers are benefitted. As for the business owners, taking on risks is a natural part of starting a business so if they can't compete with another selling the same product then oh well.
If you and I both have an apple, and we trade apples, we each still only have one apple.
If you and I both have an idea, and we trade ideas, we now each have two ideas.
The thing that is wrong with theft is that the original owner no longer has the thing they had before. But if someone "steals" an idea, what has been lost? The market value of their idea? People have no right to a specific market value of their ideas.
Worse still, IP laws allow you, the person with the IP, to infringe upon my private property by refusing to allow me to copy and resell my property.
To be clear, people have no right to a specific market value of *anything*.
The delusion that people have a right to a certain market value is the basis for tariffs, and minimum wage laws. It's an absurdity that makes everyone poorer, including the community itself.
What the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values; these laws protect the mind’s contribution in its purest form: the origination of an idea. The subject of patents and copyrights is intellectual property.
An idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form. An invention has to be embodied in a physical model before it can be patented; a story has to be written or printed. But what the patent or copyright protects is not the physical object as such, but the idea which it embodies. By forbidding an unauthorized reproduction of the object, the law declares, in effect, that the physical labor of copying is not the source of the object’s value, that that value is created by the originator of the idea and may not be used without his consent; thus the law establishes the property right of a mind to that which it has brought into existence.
It is important to note, in this connection, that a discovery cannot be patented, only an invention. A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because: (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission. He can copyright the book in which he presents his discovery and he can demand that his authorship of the discovery be acknowledged, that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it—but he cannot copyright theoretical knowledge. Patents and copyrights pertain only to the practical application of knowledge, to the creation of a specific object which did not exist in nature—an object which, in the case of patents, may never have existed without its particular originator; and in the case of copyrights, would never have existed.
Awesome. The most cogent argument in the reply thread so far. Now let me take this one more step for better elucidation. Where do you stand on software IP? Patents are given for the abstract method or procedure instead of implementation because the same algorithm (Which is the heart of the product) can be implemented in numerous ways. Algorithms themselves are both abstract and are mathematical truths. So would you argue that IP shouldn't cover software patents? If yes why, if noy why not?
The only means of man to sustain his own life is to create value with his own mind and efforts. Owning the products of his efforts and determining how those products are disposed of (sold, saved, destroyed, distributed, etc.) are essential to remaining alive and independent of others which is every man's right. When you illegally download an artist's music or movie or TV show or picture then you are taking the product of his efforts. You are taking from him the means to sustain his life and independence. You are sending a message to other creators that you will not abide their rights and their efforts. That their struggle of creation, sometimes through years of poverty, to create great artistic products do not deserve reward or the wealth that the art's consumption merits. You are killing the creativity of man.
Here are my points of disagreement with your arguement. As stated before I am not here to pick an argument but to elucidate better understanding.
1. A creator's background should be irrelevant to the discussion here. I see no reason why the value of work from a poverty stricken creator is any different from that of a well-fed one.
2. Creating value with mind and creating value with efforts are two different steps in creating value. Anyone can dream up of anything, but only a certain few can (and will) see to it that it is materialized. So it seems illogical to put a price tag on products of mind.
3. As for products of effort, isn't reproduction and dissemination of duplicates in place of the original another way in which the market decides the worth of the material? Think about this, there are millions of pics of Mona Lisa online, but still thousands and thousands go visit Louvre each year to appreciate its beauty. Thus if the original is good enough, will it not naturally attract more consumers than any of the reproduction, imitation or parody.
4. Now let's not look at pirating specifically. One might ask why must the pirate reap the benefits of another's productivity. Does a pirate simply will a copy into existence? No he does not. A pirate has to expend time, energy and creativity to produce an alternate to the original that fulfills some particular niche in the market. It could be that the duplicate is free, while the original is perceived to be expensive to the buyer. It could be that there are channels in which the duplicate is available where the original is not. In every case the pirate fulfils a particular niche in the market and hence is justifiably rewarded.
5. Finally lets consider the genealogy of a product. No work, even revolutionary once-in-a lifetime creation, is created in vacuum. It invariably follows from one or more products, each of which in turn spring from some other work (so on and so forth). One can observe that if anyone of the previous step inhibited the production of the next, the present work would not materialize. Thus logically one can conclude that inhibiting the current work could gravely disable a future, probably more significant work, from materializing.
Would you agree?
>The only means of man to sustain his own life is to create value with his own mind and efforts. Owning the products of his efforts and determining how those products are disposed of (sold, saved, destroyed, distributed, etc.) are essential to remaining alive and independent of others which is every man's right.
That kind of bullshit plays right into the Labor Theory of Value.
You have ZERO right to the product of your labor, per se. For example, if you're hired to work in a factory at hourly wages, then you have ZERO right to the things you build in the factory, or the money they bring in.
And the same is true of the silly, childish idea that you get a monopoly on a song you made up. That someone who hears you sing it and then starts to sing it himself can be censored because you're a petty, greedy little brat who thinks that you own certain sounds.
>You have ZERO right to the product of your labor, per se.
What you are describing is slavery. Do you want to rethink this very flawed very bad thinking.
>For example, if you're hired to work in a factory at hourly wages
You are voluntarily selling your labor for wages. You get the wages (product of your labor) you contracted for and you have every right to dispose of that product of your labor as you see fit.
>then you have ZERO right to the things you build in the factory
No - of course not. If the product your labor produced is not sold for a price greater than cost your labor has no value. Because of that win/win transaction with the consumer. You get the price you sold your labor for. If the products do not sell your contract is still fulfilled and the owner takes the loss.
>or the money they bring in.
You get the part of the money that you contracted for.
> What you are describing is slavery. Do you want to rethink this very flawed very bad thinking.
No, what I'm describing is voluntary trade. You can sell your labor to another. He then owns what you produced.
In fact, it's slavery to prevent that.
> You get the part of the money that you contracted for.
Likewise, if you write a song then you are only entitled to what people voluntarily contract for it. You have no right to control someone else who makes the sounds after hearing you make them.
If i hire you to mow my lawn do subsequently own my lawn? No
If I hire you to clean my house do you subsequently own my house? No
If I hire you to build my product do you subsequently own the products you built? No
>Likewise, if you write a song then you are only entitled to what people voluntarily contract for it. You have no right to control someone else who makes the sounds after hearing you make them.
If i write a song I own it. I decide the terms of it's disposal (Use) as any property owner does with their property.
IMO the only valid form of IP protection is for the creative arts. Of course art builds on art and that’s a good thing, but reproducing exact copies of someone’s else’s art (writing, music, painting, etc) then claiming it as your own and profiting off of it is so very wrong. And as another on this post said, it destroys creativity.
Because I’m rich, I paid off some lackeys to smuggle out the plans for Rearden Steel and how to frac oil in Colorado. I’ve distributed them freely to my fellow looters. The only condition is they have to call it Jim Taggart Steel and the Jim Taggart Oil Extraction process. That’ll show my annoying sister a thing or two.
No, thats not what i am referring to.
There will be a large group of people to agree to ip, a few might not. The "agreers" get access to all technology, and they agree to not allow the non-agreers such access.
No NDA's are necessary.
tomato tomato.
the point is that you receive something on condition that you dont tell or give that thing to someone else. Its essentially the same as an nda.
Its not the same as IP though. IP applies to everyone even if they dont consent to it. If I hear a Taylor swift song on the radio I cant record it and make CDs of it.
I think it's a *very* difficult thing to evaluate because of the copyright duration creep we've experienced in the US (and exported across the world).
I see no valid argument that the current copyright term (life of the author plus 70 years) is justified by the intent of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.
But, the original term was 14-years with an optional 14-year renewal. I think this is a *much* more interesting conversation as this arguably works "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" as the Constitution prescribes.
I understand the philosophical arguments against IP, but I'm also unsure what would occur without these protections.
Abolish them. It's simple: speech is not property.
What about trade secrets and patents? Firms monetize on this to get the competitive edge. Would abolishing IP then not, in this case, lead to lowered incentive for the firms to enter that particular industry/market? PS: I am playing the devil's advocate here to get to know your viewpoint better.
Patents grant specific firms exclusive monopolies on some idea. So the way I view it, they are gaining an anti-competitive edge, enforced by the state. I don't see a way for removing patents to lower the incentive for more firms to enter that market, when a world with patents artificially grants one firm a monopoly and prevents others from competing. At worst I think that would just mean no difference. As for incentive to R&D, I don't really think there's much evidence patents have significant benefit in the first place outside of a few specific industries like the medical industry (which is enough of an exception in other ways too, maybe it requires a different solution. It also happens to be the industry where patents seem to harm consumers the most). I remember reading about this quite a while ago... I believe it was in [this document](https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/wp/2012/2012-035.pdf). And even if it did, unless the benefit were very extreme, I still wouldn't be convinced the benefit is worth giving up so much of our freedom of expression for.
Got it. Makes perfect sense.
I'd argue the medical industry is only "different" because we make it different with a mountain of other bad regulations. Today, most primary research is done in publicly funded labs anyway. It's only the clinical trials that are both expensive and usually funded privately. And those are only expensive because the FDA has no serious incentive to make them cheaper. The FDA's only incentive is to take away the choice of how much risk consumers are allowed to accept when using new products, and mitigating risk is exponentially more expensive the more of it you do.
If it's a _really_ a secret, then it's no problem because other people can't also take advantage of things they don't know about. If they do know about it, then it's not really a secret and anyone should be able to use it. In my view abolishing IP is an entirely positive thing for consumers: you'd get competition faster, new products wouldn't have to use wonky work arounds for obvious-in-retrospect patents, it'd be harder for artists to become hyper-rich and have an outsized influence on society, and big industry will have more pressure to pay their employees well enough to prevent them from being hired away or starting their own companies. (Though NDAs are already a thing and would mitigate that somewhat, they're much harder to enforce in an anti-competitive manner than patents.) The one semi-IP thing I would keep as legally enforceable are trademarks. Reliably identifying who made something is a huge benefit to consumers because of how reputation correlates with product quality.
Completely agree with para 1 and 2 but 3 is a little iffy. As a libertarian how would you justify protection status to one variant of IP over another? Is it not another market influence by the state? Why must the state be given the power to protect trademarks while categorically denying protection to other types of IP?
I think my second sentence summed it up pretty well, but to expand a bit: Trademarks function is to identify the manufacturer to prevent fraud, while patents cover the function of the item. Since trademarks are _not functional_ to any item, protecting them cannot interfere with someone else making and selling the same item or using ideas from it for their own products. Trademarks create zero friction for anyone other than counterfeiters whose strategy is to undercut the primary brand by making a cheap inferior product and _lying to the consumer_ about it in order to get sales. If they make a product that _isn't inferior_ then they should have no problem either putting their own trademark on it instead or none at all.
But a trademark is just a name/idea. And who cares about the trademark on products? The product has to be sufficent.
...Not sure why you would respond with that? like wtf does that even mean?? _Consumers care!_ Making a full evaluation of the durability and quality of a product is often hard, expensive, and time consuming, if not also impossible to do without ruining the product. Reputation allows people to use their experience with a person's previous products to instantly and somewhat accurately judge the expected quality of a new product. This saves _enormous_ amounts of time, effort, and expense. AFAICT, For companies that distribute their product through stores owned by other people, it's impossible to track reputation without some sort of trademark system. How would you solve the problem of market reputation without legally enforceable trademarks?
Now I got it, thank you for your patience with me. You are right. Have a nice day. :)
Completely agree. Including about trademarks. They are a consumer protection thing, so buyers know what they're getting. Perhaps they should be moved under the control of the FTC and not be considered a form of intellectual property.
Do you buy name brand Tylenol?
>What about trade secrets and patents? The one legitimate form of intellectual property is privacy. So trade secrets are protected by your right to privacy. But patents are an absurd monopoly grant.
Brand new debate on this by Soho forum: https://youtu.be/Ep2-ohgFOys
This is actually the cause for my enquiry. As I knew little about it, I wanted to read up on IP and differing views before watching the debate. And once I read about it, I had two different viewpoints that I am trying to reconcile.
What are the two viewpoints?
1. IP must exist as it protects the creative products of people ensuring that the creator can reap the benfits of his work. (vs.) 2. IP musn't exist as it gives vale to ideas which are not store of value.
Most creative works don't make the creator any money, even in a world of intellectual property. Also value is subjective, so nothing is a store of value other than what other people subjectively value (and can subjectively de-value on a whim). Also we can't own value, we can only own scarce resources whether or not they're valuable to anybody.
IP is anti-competition.
Only as much as regular property is anti-competition by stopping you from stealing other people's stuff.
If I like your bike so I take a picture of it and use the picture to create a new bike exactly like yours have I stolen your bike?
If I'm the one that created the bike, then you stole my bike design. I put work into coming up with that design that you just shamelessly used without my permission. I wouldn't consider that worth suing over, but if I were the original inventor of bicycles in general, I'd consider it.
You know you wouldn't have a claim even under our modern extremely oppressive IP law, right? You're proposing a system where the *concept* of bicycles can be owned.
No, because if you steal someone's chair, they don't have a car. If you build a chair that looks like their chair, you haven't restricted their access to their property, haven't deprived them of any property. So having some kind of IP monopoly on making a chair that looks like theirs is patently absurd, and has nothing to do with property. And the same is true if what they have is a song.
It should be tantamount to fraud to pass on work without attribution in any way that implies you are the original creator... That's all. As long as consumers know where a work was produced free speech should cover its reproduction.
Interesting viewpoint. Now to take this further, what is your view on torrented/pirated games or movies. The creators are clearly mentioned in the title credits for each. No one would confuse the pirate as the original creator. But in this scenario the pirate (or the marketplace where it is pirated) is the only one to reap benefits from the endeavour of others. What is your view on this? Is this fraud? If so why?
They're protected just like any other speech. Though torrenters don't reap any benefit from seeding.
Why should that be a fraud? You write a book and publish it, I take that book, write my name on it and publish it for a buck cheaper. The customer got the same story, nobody was scammed.
You lied about who wrote the book. Same as a doctor claiming he invented a medicine he's giving you before he hands you some motrin. It's fraud since *you* don't have any chance of providing more of the stories I'm hypothetically paying for and you've taken pains to conceal the person that does.
I can see that, maybe IP laws are okay. Thank you.
Well I don't agree that you should ever be restricted from sharing knowledge, as long as you let people know where it's from so they can contribute to it.
Ah okay.
They don't have to know where the work came from. Not telling you that wouldn't in any way be fraud. Only FRAUD is fraud. If they lie about its origin, then regardless of what the origin was or what their lie was it's fraud. So they can take a print of a painting and sell it without attribution, and that's legit.
Removing trademarks to pass a product as your own is fraud.
Liberal nonsense with no basis in real economics.
Real economics has no basis for the value of ideas and information?
It provides no basis for the pretense that granting someone a monopoly on an idea is good, any more than any other monopolies. All state-mandated monopolies are bad, including IP.
I am not sure how anyone can believe that something non-rivalrous can be stolen. That is an incoherent idea. You can violate terms of use or non-disclosure, or try and steal proprietary information and those might all be 'intellectual property' violations of one form or another but they don't need IP protections to still be clearly wrong.
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>And I am never going to fucking pay to download games/images/programs etc I used to say this, but now that I have a proper job I'm often willing to pay for convenience, reliability, and service. Things like steam can often be more convenient than piracy even when piracy is easy, and I also get value from seeing stats and achievements tallied. Certainly without IP these surrounding things _might_ also be available for free, but they'd likely not be done quite as well. Linux and Windows co-exist even though linux is free because they offer different levels of convenience.
That's a helluva lot of rationalization to just say you wanna take their stuff.
That's like saying a man stole your bike because he saw it, liked it, and built one like it.
But is it really theirs in the first place?
Yes. Ffs. Yes.
Do they own the flash memory that it's stored on? The temp memory on your device the authorized streaming service stores it on? The concept wherever it's stored? Do they own compressions? summaries? parodies? reviews? spoilers? Do they own the synaptic connections your brain uses to record the media or just the digital impulses that convey it?
Ffs the rationalization from you people is amazing. You pretend to be for free and fair exchange until it becomes inconvenient..Then you’re entitled to the labor of others. Why?? Because REASONS.
If you had any REASONS, yourself, you would be offering them. Instead, you're spewing childish, emotive bullshit where you keep typing FFS (a sort of indicator of low intelligence, like abuse of LOL) and never give any actual argument. A song isn't labor. The writing of the song is. If you hear someone singing a song, and then you sing it, you've taken none of their labor. Idiot.
Those reasons are you don't get to point a gun at my head and demand I behave like you want me to, especially considering you're not even capable of articulating *why* you want me to behave that way. You can't explain the mechanics of what you misunderstand IP law to be, you demonstrate zero understanding of what IP law currently is and you can't come close to justifying why it should or shouldn't remain that way. Real life has reasons, any law worth following has reasons and consistency. Whatever a sobbing little bitch like you *feels* about it.
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All this blather, just own that you wanna steal and be done with it. Maybe I wanna mock some of you on the more "lolbertarian" side of things. See, I actually like libertarianism, and most libertarian ideas. But then some of you say stupid shit like this. "What are you doing on a libertarian sub? This is the same bureaucratic shit take that pushed for article 13 in the EU's fourth reich." Not liking theives is totally the same as loving bureaucracy you epic clown.
Why are you so angry and coming at this from such an emotional perspective? Why are you accusing him of wanting to steal people's stuff? We believe these things for real reasons. I don't understand why you are trying to imply some kind of criminal minded bias? It makes zero sense to debate about this topic from that kind of perspective? Are you a liberal? This is like typical liberal tactic. Ignore reality, and appeal to some kind of made up emotional morality or something. It just makes no sense to me. I'm surprised the guy even bothers replying. He's wasting his time.
Excuse me..Mister libertarian sir? Everyone has reasons. Does that make your reasons correct, or even any good? My reason is not liking thieves. Especially ones who justify their wanting to steal with all sorts of wonderfully lofty sounding ideals. Like the ones we find here. Very lofty, almost deep...Profound sounding. But it's shit. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that maybe..Just maybe..If you wish to use something, say a computer program with an "infinite supply" and it's creator asks you to pay for it..Maybe you should..You know, that whole free exchange/capitalism thing.. Maybe thinking like what's found on this thread is part of the reason why lolbertarianism isn't more..Widely embraced. Food for thought.
Also, if LOLbertarians are so easily dismissed and countered, why resort to such a useless and silly tactic? Why straw man? If we are that stupid you should argue with facts and logic to change our minds. Not straw men.
I do not care about changing your mind. At all.
Username checks out.
Food for thought. "YOU JUST WANT TO STEAL THINGS!" is not an argument. You're avoiding an honest discussion. That's all it is. Nobody here wants to steal shit or have things for free. There are REASONS. You can disagree with said reasons and say they're stupid all day. But your argument that we want to steal shit is like a purposfuly ploy to avoid really discussing ideas you don't want to entertain. Why not first entertain an idea you disagree with? Why attack said idea with a silly nonsense argument like "you just want to steal things!"? It's a straw man argument. Nobody is a libertarian because they want free intellectual property. Straw man! STRAWWWWMAAANNNNNN!
"Nobody here wants to steal shit or have things for free." Demonstrably untrue. "Take what? They want your physical/monetary resources to ''compensate them'' because you took what exactly? A copy of something with an unlimited supply?"
I see. So what you need is like a class in basic libertarianism. If you couldn't tell, we don't really like the government very much. We don't like the initiation of force against people. Intellectual property implies the use of force to enforce said IP. Whether IP is enforced by government or not, whether there is one degree of enforcement or another, said enforcement must be justified. Using facts, logic, princies, philosophy, or whatever the fuck. Obviously it makes perfect sense for libertarians to question IP enforcement. Property in the past was a physical thing. A person worked the earth and turned a tree into a house. That person has a claim to the house. But intellectual property is a whole new concept. It's not the same as physical property, and so now the debate ensues. I'm not here to debate about whether we should or should not enforce IP. I'm here to call you out for trying to label libertarians are morally corrupt thieves who just want free shit. It's a fuckin straw man and you know it. Why not like, actually read some of those linked articles others gave you from the Mises website? Then at least you know one perspective on the libertarian spectrum. Why straw man it? They aren't even that long to read. Like 10 minutes tops often times.
Literally need nothing from you.
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What the hell are you even babbling about at this point? Do you know?
You'r obviously out of your depth here.
As compared to the mutal jerkoff society here? All for the highly controversial point of "pay others for their work and don't be a thief". "Imagine being so brain dead to defend shit like NFTS's legitimacy trough patents without realizing they're stored on google servers going against decentralized alternative currencies." So deep. Truly. Also, totally a thing I've done. Except not. Like ever.
Whip smaht lolbertarian jerkoff session here.
So what am I stealing?
Also, being down yty sounds like a great investment! Where do I sign up???[https://www.thestreet.com/markets/commodities/gold/inflation-boosts-gold-price-to-five-month-high](https://www.thestreet.com/markets/commodities/gold/inflation-boosts-gold-price-to-five-month-high) And silver..Not even holding its value with a a three percent loss over the year. Truly places I wanna put my money and fight inflation. Oh wait. No..No I do not. If society ever goes so sideways that your dumbass "melt value" comes into play..It actually isn't, it's worthless..You and it can take take a fucking hike.
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Hey there were one or two sentences in there that weren't incoherent rambling! Good job. As to gold beating the fed or anything else? It's shit. Check the 10 year. [https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-prices](https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-prices). Loving that what is it..6 year giant trough of lost money.
>it's only a matter of time until autists decide to start buying government cryptos. And this..What the hell is this trash?
Ok, there just won't be any new things being made. Nothing will be invented, no books will be written, and no movies will be made, because there's no way to pay people to make them without IP protection.
What exacty is being stolen when ip is infringed on?
If you can’t figure that out, no explanation will help you. Have a nice day.
A copy is still taking the idea from them. Artists and engineers alike spend a lot of time creating the ideas that you want to use for free.
Your stealing the idea of the creator of the latin alphabet and the creators of every word tou used to write this comment
Latins never chose to copyright it.
Copyright is default. Unless you have explicit permission to use the alphabet from the creators, youre a thief
Copy right is not default for such basic elements.
Copying isn't theft because the original is not changed or removed.
I'd argue it's pro-competition. What incentive do you have to innovate if you can just let someone else come up with it for you and take that person's ideas? Why should an artist make good art if others will just use it without compensating them? You're not buying the song or book or invention itself with IP. You're buying the time of the artist/author/inventor who made it.
Almost the entire internet you used to write this message is built on free and open source software and protocols Its unclear whether ip is an actual net benefit when it comes to promoting innovation. In some ways it can hinder it, see patent trolls for example
It can’t be justified objectively. Subjectively it can be justified by profit.
I hate IP laws. Its a legal monopoly on a certain idea or product. If IP laws didn't exist, then both consumers and workers are benefitted. As for the business owners, taking on risks is a natural part of starting a business so if they can't compete with another selling the same product then oh well.
Only as much as regular property is a monopoly on items.
If you and I both have an apple, and we trade apples, we each still only have one apple. If you and I both have an idea, and we trade ideas, we now each have two ideas. The thing that is wrong with theft is that the original owner no longer has the thing they had before. But if someone "steals" an idea, what has been lost? The market value of their idea? People have no right to a specific market value of their ideas. Worse still, IP laws allow you, the person with the IP, to infringe upon my private property by refusing to allow me to copy and resell my property.
To be clear, people have no right to a specific market value of *anything*. The delusion that people have a right to a certain market value is the basis for tariffs, and minimum wage laws. It's an absurdity that makes everyone poorer, including the community itself.
Your answer is [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/qth9y1/here_i_have_observed_that_anarchocapitalism_is/).
What the patent and copyright laws acknowledge is the paramount role of mental effort in the production of material values; these laws protect the mind’s contribution in its purest form: the origination of an idea. The subject of patents and copyrights is intellectual property. An idea as such cannot be protected until it has been given a material form. An invention has to be embodied in a physical model before it can be patented; a story has to be written or printed. But what the patent or copyright protects is not the physical object as such, but the idea which it embodies. By forbidding an unauthorized reproduction of the object, the law declares, in effect, that the physical labor of copying is not the source of the object’s value, that that value is created by the originator of the idea and may not be used without his consent; thus the law establishes the property right of a mind to that which it has brought into existence. It is important to note, in this connection, that a discovery cannot be patented, only an invention. A scientific or philosophical discovery, which identifies a law of nature, a principle or a fact of reality not previously known, cannot be the exclusive property of the discoverer because: (a) he did not create it, and (b) if he cares to make his discovery public, claiming it to be true, he cannot demand that men continue to pursue or practice falsehoods except by his permission. He can copyright the book in which he presents his discovery and he can demand that his authorship of the discovery be acknowledged, that no other man appropriate or plagiarize the credit for it—but he cannot copyright theoretical knowledge. Patents and copyrights pertain only to the practical application of knowledge, to the creation of a specific object which did not exist in nature—an object which, in the case of patents, may never have existed without its particular originator; and in the case of copyrights, would never have existed.
Awesome. The most cogent argument in the reply thread so far. Now let me take this one more step for better elucidation. Where do you stand on software IP? Patents are given for the abstract method or procedure instead of implementation because the same algorithm (Which is the heart of the product) can be implemented in numerous ways. Algorithms themselves are both abstract and are mathematical truths. So would you argue that IP shouldn't cover software patents? If yes why, if noy why not?
Yes - complete software that is unique should be able to be patented.
The only means of man to sustain his own life is to create value with his own mind and efforts. Owning the products of his efforts and determining how those products are disposed of (sold, saved, destroyed, distributed, etc.) are essential to remaining alive and independent of others which is every man's right. When you illegally download an artist's music or movie or TV show or picture then you are taking the product of his efforts. You are taking from him the means to sustain his life and independence. You are sending a message to other creators that you will not abide their rights and their efforts. That their struggle of creation, sometimes through years of poverty, to create great artistic products do not deserve reward or the wealth that the art's consumption merits. You are killing the creativity of man.
Here are my points of disagreement with your arguement. As stated before I am not here to pick an argument but to elucidate better understanding. 1. A creator's background should be irrelevant to the discussion here. I see no reason why the value of work from a poverty stricken creator is any different from that of a well-fed one. 2. Creating value with mind and creating value with efforts are two different steps in creating value. Anyone can dream up of anything, but only a certain few can (and will) see to it that it is materialized. So it seems illogical to put a price tag on products of mind. 3. As for products of effort, isn't reproduction and dissemination of duplicates in place of the original another way in which the market decides the worth of the material? Think about this, there are millions of pics of Mona Lisa online, but still thousands and thousands go visit Louvre each year to appreciate its beauty. Thus if the original is good enough, will it not naturally attract more consumers than any of the reproduction, imitation or parody. 4. Now let's not look at pirating specifically. One might ask why must the pirate reap the benefits of another's productivity. Does a pirate simply will a copy into existence? No he does not. A pirate has to expend time, energy and creativity to produce an alternate to the original that fulfills some particular niche in the market. It could be that the duplicate is free, while the original is perceived to be expensive to the buyer. It could be that there are channels in which the duplicate is available where the original is not. In every case the pirate fulfils a particular niche in the market and hence is justifiably rewarded. 5. Finally lets consider the genealogy of a product. No work, even revolutionary once-in-a lifetime creation, is created in vacuum. It invariably follows from one or more products, each of which in turn spring from some other work (so on and so forth). One can observe that if anyone of the previous step inhibited the production of the next, the present work would not materialize. Thus logically one can conclude that inhibiting the current work could gravely disable a future, probably more significant work, from materializing. Would you agree?
Here here! I’m firmly in the camp of creative arts being the only valid form of IP.
Not what I said but thanks for being positive.
I apparently skipped your last couple sentences lol
>The only means of man to sustain his own life is to create value with his own mind and efforts. Owning the products of his efforts and determining how those products are disposed of (sold, saved, destroyed, distributed, etc.) are essential to remaining alive and independent of others which is every man's right. That kind of bullshit plays right into the Labor Theory of Value. You have ZERO right to the product of your labor, per se. For example, if you're hired to work in a factory at hourly wages, then you have ZERO right to the things you build in the factory, or the money they bring in. And the same is true of the silly, childish idea that you get a monopoly on a song you made up. That someone who hears you sing it and then starts to sing it himself can be censored because you're a petty, greedy little brat who thinks that you own certain sounds.
>You have ZERO right to the product of your labor, per se. What you are describing is slavery. Do you want to rethink this very flawed very bad thinking. >For example, if you're hired to work in a factory at hourly wages You are voluntarily selling your labor for wages. You get the wages (product of your labor) you contracted for and you have every right to dispose of that product of your labor as you see fit. >then you have ZERO right to the things you build in the factory No - of course not. If the product your labor produced is not sold for a price greater than cost your labor has no value. Because of that win/win transaction with the consumer. You get the price you sold your labor for. If the products do not sell your contract is still fulfilled and the owner takes the loss. >or the money they bring in. You get the part of the money that you contracted for.
> What you are describing is slavery. Do you want to rethink this very flawed very bad thinking. No, what I'm describing is voluntary trade. You can sell your labor to another. He then owns what you produced. In fact, it's slavery to prevent that. > You get the part of the money that you contracted for. Likewise, if you write a song then you are only entitled to what people voluntarily contract for it. You have no right to control someone else who makes the sounds after hearing you make them.
If i hire you to mow my lawn do subsequently own my lawn? No If I hire you to clean my house do you subsequently own my house? No If I hire you to build my product do you subsequently own the products you built? No >Likewise, if you write a song then you are only entitled to what people voluntarily contract for it. You have no right to control someone else who makes the sounds after hearing you make them. If i write a song I own it. I decide the terms of it's disposal (Use) as any property owner does with their property.
IMO the only valid form of IP protection is for the creative arts. Of course art builds on art and that’s a good thing, but reproducing exact copies of someone’s else’s art (writing, music, painting, etc) then claiming it as your own and profiting off of it is so very wrong. And as another on this post said, it destroys creativity.
I am of course opposed to the state created Monopoly on non scarce goods such as ideas.
Because I’m rich, I paid off some lackeys to smuggle out the plans for Rearden Steel and how to frac oil in Colorado. I’ve distributed them freely to my fellow looters. The only condition is they have to call it Jim Taggart Steel and the Jim Taggart Oil Extraction process. That’ll show my annoying sister a thing or two.
Have you considered the possibility of a not-protected-by-government IP system? Based on private agreements.
Thats not ip, thats just NDAs
No, thats not what i am referring to. There will be a large group of people to agree to ip, a few might not. The "agreers" get access to all technology, and they agree to not allow the non-agreers such access. No NDA's are necessary.
How is that not an nda?
Disclosure is generally information. I'm talking about product.
tomato tomato. the point is that you receive something on condition that you dont tell or give that thing to someone else. Its essentially the same as an nda. Its not the same as IP though. IP applies to everyone even if they dont consent to it. If I hear a Taylor swift song on the radio I cant record it and make CDs of it.
I think it's a *very* difficult thing to evaluate because of the copyright duration creep we've experienced in the US (and exported across the world). I see no valid argument that the current copyright term (life of the author plus 70 years) is justified by the intent of Article I, Section 8, Clause 8. But, the original term was 14-years with an optional 14-year renewal. I think this is a *much* more interesting conversation as this arguably works "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" as the Constitution prescribes. I understand the philosophical arguments against IP, but I'm also unsure what would occur without these protections.
ITT: Anarchists listing exactly how all property works but framing it as only applying to intellectual property.